Friday, January 16, 2009
On Nov. 4, 2008, students cried out, by way of greeting, “Have you voted yet?” The answer was rarely anything but yes. The spirit was exuberant; students compared their “I voted” stickers and discussed the latest on the election. It was a monumental shift in awareness — more people voted than ever. According to CNN.com, 1,185,520 people voted in Kansas, and 19 percent were college-aged.
But I was left wondering about the nature of those college-aged voters. How many knew what they were voting for? How many, sucked in by the media swarm around the election, just voted to be “cool”? Did they have any real awareness of the state and local issues, and their importance and impact?
I began to survey my friends. After high-fiving them for voting, I would ask them who they had voted for in the local and state elections — the space in the ballot after the bubbles for Barack Obama and John McCain. Many students I spoke to had left the spaces blank. If they had voted, most had voted along party lines, recognizing none of the actual candidates. Most student voters seemed to miss the real connection between what happens in the community and what happens in their lives. For example, the amount of funding the University receives is dictated by those we vote into state office. These Kansas and Lawrence issues affect students as directly as any presidential election.
I have seen this lack of awareness of life off the hill. I once spoke to a geography professor who assigned his students to draw maps of Lawrence. Underclassmen included campus, the dorms, Target and Wal-mart. A few car-owners added downtown. The maps drawn by upperclassmen included off-campus bars. Most maps contained little more than that. In short, KU students live in a bubble.
There is so much more to the map of Lawrence. Issues that affect the city affect students too.
My perspective of the interrelation between campus and community is due to the many years I spent as a Lawrencian before I ventured up the hill. When I joined the University community, I retained my connections to the valley below. Many faculty members share this awareness, as they work at the University but live and raise families in the Lawrence community. Most students, however, remain oblivious.
Mount Oread and Lawrence proper are interdependent. Students should be aware of both the issues that Lawrence faces and the wealth of opportunities that it provides. Our hill could not stand tall without a firm community base below.
— Daldorph is a Lawrence junior in journalism and French.
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